KENT DAVIES: You’re listening to Preserves: A Manitoba Food History Podcast. Exploring the rich, flavourful history of Manitoba food and the people who make it, sell it and eat it. From the packing table to the dinner table. From restaurant specials to grandma’s secret recipes. We consider the cultural, social, and commercial aspects of Manitoba food and what it means to us. I’m your host Kent Davies. As per usual, I’m joined with Manitoba business historian, Professor Janis Thiessen.
JANIS THIESSEN: Hi, Kent. What’s in the pantry for us today?
KENT DAVIES: Today we’re talking about family farms in Manitoba.
JANIS THIESSEN: Nice! My parents were farmers in Manitoba, near Carman and Miami, before I was born. My two older siblings grew up on their farm, but my twin and I were born after the folks moved to Winnipeg.
KENT DAVIES: It’s sort of the same story with my family. My mother’s family were all farmers, so I spent a lot of summers on the farm, albeit it was in Saskatchewan and not Manitoba. But she left the farm, and her brothers continued it on but that wasn’t the story with the next generation when my cousins all moved to bigger towns or cities and did their own thing. That’s what happened to a lot of family farms as far as I can tell.
JANIS THIESSEN: True and most Manitobans today are urban rather than rural, and that’s a shift that occurred in the 1960s. Daniel Nychuk, who studied last year with us here at the University of Winnipeg as an Indigenous Summer Scholar, was able to interview his grandma, who was born in Germany about her experiences on their family farm in Osborne, Manitoba.
KENT DAVIES: Before we hear the podcast segment he created, we should probably share some broader history of farming in Manitoba.
JANIS THIESSEN: Good idea.
JANIS THIESSEN: People in Manitoba have been defining and defending the notion of “the family farm” for decades. It is worth noting that there is no single definition of a family farm: the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says the definition often varies based on “country, context, author, and political motivation.”1 Canada’s Census does not use the term ‘family farm’ but instead distinguishes between sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations.2 All these categories can have varying degrees of family ownership and involvement, blurring the line between “family farm” and “corporate farm.” What is clear, though, is that the number of Canadian farms has decreased, and their average size has increased over the last century and a half: according to the 1871 Census, there were more than 360 000 farms with an average size of 98 acres; by 2016, there were less than 194 000 farms, averaging 820 acres.3
Southern Manitoba’s unique geography and history influenced the type of farming that emerged here. As historian Ken Sylvester argues, Western Canada’s short growing season made large-scale profit-driven farm operations not as attractive as elsewhere.4 Unlike in eastern Canada and the eastern United States, the Anglo-Canadian-dominated agricultural system that emerged in Manitoba in the 1870s was heavily capitalistic and metropolitan from its beginning, complicating the extent to which small-scale family farming existed in southern Manitoba.5 Manitoba’s position within Canada’s broader economic development is also important when considering how farming practices changed overtime and what farming ideologies were responding to.6 For example, late nineteenth-century federal policy placed greater emphasis on domestic capital and internal markets by supporting agricultural producers as core components of this domestic-focused capitalism. By early- to mid-twentieth century, however, the shift towards international corporate capitalism with modernized technology and large-scale production made domestic farmers less important to Canada’s agricultural policy.7
Indigenous peoples in and around what is now southern Manitoba have practiced agriculture for millennia. Indigenous farmers developed, grew, and traded many plants, such as sunflowers, beans, and potatoes. Many of these crops remain some of Manitoba’s top exports. As farmer Chris Newman argues, understanding Indigenous agricultural practices requires understanding Indigenous systems of knowledge, worldviews, ecosystems, and land relationships that are often highly distinct from those of settler communities.9 Indigenous forms of agriculture have survived and adapted alongside settler agriculture despite colonial efforts to undermine Indigenous farmers.
By the 1880s, many Indigenous communities operated successful farms, defying Canadians’ racist view of Indigenous people as incapable of farming. While government officials promoted agriculture as a means of assimilation, First Nations farmers often shaped their farming practices to support community needs over officials’ expectations and to maintain traditional economic practices on their lands. Many Indigenous farmers’ community-centred approaches to labour and farming finances also contrasted with the type of family-centred settler farming promoted by the Canadian government.10 Métis scholar Chelsea Vowel notes many Métis families across the prairies have extensive agricultural histories despite settler biases about Indigenous farming.11 Vowel states, “the fact is, our people adapted swiftly to a set of completely new conditions, and we were damn good at it.”12
Just as shifts in political and economic interests have impacted broader perceptions of what constitutes “proper” agriculture, the definition and value of the family farm has also changed.13 In defining the family farm as the ideal form of settler agriculture on the prairies, political and economic leaders also defined ideal forms of the family, particularly regarding gender.
The diverse experiences of different settler farming groups in the late 1800s brings these narrow understandings of gender roles and division of labour into question. Farm researcher Charlotte van de Vorst notes that many of the earliest settler farms had to rely on the entire family’s labour due to limited supplies and technology and isolation from other farms and communities. Women would thus often engage in what was considered traditionally male work duties. The development of commercial grain farming in 1880s in part led to a decline in shared tasks between men and women and greater division between men’s work, namely commercial production, and women’s work, namely subsistence/domestic activities. These changes were most pronounced on wealthier farms where mechanization and expanded farm acres increased demand for male farm workers, making grain production more and more “an exclusively male endeavour.”14 The early waves of Anglo-Ontario farmers in the 1870s often received the most prime farmlands, allowing them to adopt commercial agriculture relatively early. Later settler groups, such as Ukrainians, received more difficult land to work with and often did not receive the same financial aid as earlier groups, resulting in a greater reliance on the full family’s labour.15 But even on larger, more commercialized farms, women operated key side enterprises to save on costs and earn more cash income, which was essential for continued commercialization due to high costs of mechanized equipment and acquiring more land for cash crops.16 Factors such as land conditions, period of migration, economic class, and mechanization all impacted how settler farm families organized their labour and gender roles.
On the family farm, the definition of masculinity changed over time, shaped by these economic and social circumstances. Historian Cecilia Dansyk’s examination of European colonization and settlement of the western Canadian prairies from 1880 to 1930 focuses on this changing definition among the mostly unmarried men who became farmers. Newspapers warned bachelors that without wives, their ability to raise crops and livestock or even to feed themselves would be seriously compromised: hawks would eat their chickens, pigs would uproot their gardens, cattle would eat their crops, and calves would take all their mothers’ milk.17 They needed to find a wife quickly to avoid these catastrophes. In the 1880s, as Indigenous peoples were being dispossessed and land was being allocated to settlers, “bachelor farmers were expected eventually to settle down, own a farm, marry, and raise a family. Those who had not yet done so were excused on the grounds that they were still economically unprepared to support a family, or there was a shortage of women.” By the 1920s, however, society’s perceptions of prairie bachelors had shifted. There were more European women on the prairies so more farmers were married, and bachelors tended instead to be farmhands, a role “perceived as evidence of an unambitious nature. Manitoba’s Department of Agriculture began to characterize farm workers as men ‘who have failed in pretty nearly every walk of life’.”18 A “real man” was a married man with his own farm.
A century later, Mennonite historian and farmer Royden Loewen spoke with us about his own understandings of how societal perceptions shaped his work and masculine identity. He had been conventionally farming 1700 acres (turkeys and grain) with his father and brother, but now is organically farming 320 acres with his son.19 Loewen says his switch to organic farming was made in part due to “political” and “social” reasons, which he explained by sharing an exchange he had with the Richardson Pioneer agronomist who had sold him the herbicides and the treated seed and the synthetic fertilizer when he was a conventional farmer. When the agronomist learned that Loewen was becoming an organic farmer instead, he said, “Oh no! You’re going over to the other side!”20
ROYDEN LOEWEN: And to placate him, I said, “Oh, no, no, Terry, it’s entirely based on greed.” And he said, “Oh, yeah, I can respect greed.” I said, “There’s two things; one is I’m tired of you making more money selling me herbicides than I make money selling grain, that’s just greedy. I actually want more of the profit. But secondly,” I said, “There’s something called social capital.” I said, “Where I work, the University of Winnipeg, my status will increase significantly if my colleagues find out that I’m an organic farmer.” And he said, “Oh yeah, okay. I can respect that, too.”21
JANIS THIESSEN: Loewen’s brother, by contrast, organically farms only a quarter section of his many acres of land. Loewen says his brother told him:
ROYDEN LOEWEN: “‘I can’t possibly do more, because I won’t be respected, whereas you’re a professor: people know you’re weird to begin with, so that’s fine’.”22
JANIS THIESSEN: Who is a “good” or “real” farmer is defined in much the same ways as who is a “good” or “real” man. Royden Loewen explains:
ROYDEN LOEWEN: Farming is very much social. I mean, the farmers all look at one another. There’s an informal pecking order as to who’s a good farmer and who’s not a good farmer. I mean, I learned that from my father. He would drive past land and say, “Oh yeah, that’s that guy.” Or worse, he says, “Oh, that’s a schoolteacher trying to farm. Schoolteachers should not try to farm!” Or I remember we interviewed a guy, an organic farmer from Altona, Joe Brown, who just told us how he remembered—and I absolutely resonate with this—that he detested his role as a conventional farmer in the ‘70s and ‘80s when they were using herbicides. Then he said, “And of course, you always had an overlap.” Because it was much, much better to overlap and have a strip of stunted grain from too much chemical, than to allow wheat to have a strip of untreated land and there would be a bright strip of mustard or something. That is the biggest shame there was. So yeah, my father loved [the herbicides] 2,4-D and MCPA when they came out in the ‘50s and ‘60s because, for once, you could get rid of that embarrassing mustard plant! It’s not that mustard necessarily reduced your yield a lot, it was just like, such an obvious weed that it was so embarrassing. And so, yeah, farmers are constantly looking at one another.23
JANIS THIESSEN: Shaped by these social expectations, Loewen chooses to grow sunflowers, hemp, and corn as these crops are tall:
ROYDEN LOEWEN: My brother who is a real farmer says I’m not going to be organic farming with you at all if we can’t impress the neighbours and so— While one thing is we know the value of sunflowers and hemp and corn as organic crops because they’re tall. And so, they’ll hide the weeds. So, we will not be embarrassed.”24
KENT DAVIES: So, all that is old is new again.
JANIS THIESSEN: Yeah, the shift to industrial agriculture and back again to organic agriculture is mirrored by the current emphasis on farm-to-table eating. Daniel Nychuk explores this history in his interview with his Oma, a farmer some fifty kilometres south of Winnipeg. Let’s conclude our history of farming in Manitoba by hearing their story.
KENT DAVIES: All right, let’s have a listen.
DANIEL NYCHUK: It’s my favourite time of year, with long warm days, filled with sunlight and outdoor activities, of course I’m referring to summer, when the crops are beginning to ripen, and everyone rushes to enjoy the brief months in Manitoba you can still stand to be outside without getting hit by minus thirty weather, or a big snowstorm. But my favourite part of summer is when my Oma’s garden is in full swing with fresh fruit, and vegetables, with my personal favourite being her strawberries. Although small, they pack a flavour with the perfect balance of sweetness, juiciness, and tanginess, that pairs exceptionally well with a bowl of ice cream for a nice dessert after a long day of work on the farm.
My name is Daniel Nychuk, and I come from a farm located in Osborne, Manitoba, and what I just explained is only a small taste of what it is like to live farm-to-table. In Manitoba, we get only a brief gardening season making it impossible to experience these extravagant flavours year-round, and if the rabbits, birds, or late May or June frost don’t get to your garden first, you may not get to experience it at all. My Oma has always had a nice garden to eat from. She has also passed this down to my mother. However, growing up in Germany was a little different, as they lived off the farm, and garden to eat. The climate allowed them to produce their own protein, poultry, and produce year-round to be able to experience that farm-to-table freshness.
OMA: We have a garden und [and] what I do I buy peas und asparagus; that is all what I have to do. Opa have potatoes in the field, early potatoes und we have lots of stuff in the garden: red cabbage, white, und lots of trees on the farm in Germany. Nice apples und pears und—
DANIEL NYCHUK: For the garden, did you ever sell any of your garden or was it just for you to eat.
OMA: Just for us und for the neighbours. I put stuff on for the neighbour they looking after my kids when I was not there, und dann [and then] I put, I give her always something when I have enough. We bring our cows und pigs to the butcher.
OMA: Und dann they make what I like to have soup meat, und sausages, und what you like und for on the bread, on the sandwich stuff, what you like to bacon, und ham, und they make that. Und dann many times I sell a half cow oder weil [or because] the people like that from the farmers. We sell eggs und potatoes on the farm, Daniel, und all this stuff.
DANIEL NYCHUK: So, were you responsible to sell it? Like did you, did you sell it to someone else to sell? Like did you sell it to a store to sell or did you sell it directly to people?
OMA: To people.
DANIEL NYCHUK: To people, that they get fresh—?
OMA: Yeah, that they get fresh food to eat. They look after this.
DANIEL NYCHUK: So was it mostly then all your friends and neighbours that would live close by?
OMA: Ja [yes], the neighbours und from the city.
DANIEL NYCHUK: That is the voice of my Oma, a farmer in Southern Manitoba, who you can probably tell from the accent immigrated from Germany. I interviewed her while we were cutting and washing vegetables for a bone broth soup. She moved to Canada with her husband and two daughters in 1978. My Oma is describing her life in Germany, and how she lived by purchasing very few items, as she could mostly produce them herself. Hmmm, that sounds familiar. Sounds like how our ancestors used to live. But how far back can we date the farm-to-table movement?
Well, you could go all the way back to the stone age, In the book The Industrial Diet by Anthony Winson, he explains that during this time, humans had no ability to store, and very little technology, so their diet had to reflect what they could immediately hunt and gather in their area.25 But I think that might be going a little too far back in time. Trying to define the actual origins of agriculture is difficult. There are many ideas and theories of how agriculture came to be.26 For example, Jacques Cauvin suggests that farming wasn’t introduced as an economic system, but emerged alongside evolving cultural practices, including, “new cosmologies, religious practices, and symbolic behaviours.”27 It was the result of changing ideas, that included new relationships with the environment, and how it could provide food. But I still think we may be a little too far back in time. Anthony Winson and Katherine Leonard Turner date the major turn toward modern agriculture in the industrial revolution, as the late nineteenth to early twentieth century.28 Now I think we are approaching the right time. During the industrial revolution, we saw a new way of going about agriculture, as new technological innovations created easier transportation methods, and improved techniques of storing and preserving foods, like refrigeration. In the mid-twentieth century, North America underwent major changes in food production and consumption. Before the Second World War, American food was, by necessity, farm-to-table. By the 1950s, small farms, short supply chains, and fresh produce began to give way to agribusiness. Food was processed, packaged, frozen, and canned as supply chains became larger. Supermarkets replaced small grocery stores, neighborhood produce stands, and independent butcher shops. In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a small movement to put healthier foods in restaurants and houses, reviving this idea of fresh farm-to-table consumption.29 And today we see this movement continuing to grow. For instance, if you go to local restaurants, you will see advertising of farm-to-table foods to draw in consumers who are inclined to buy local. Berry patches and farmers markets in summer is another good example, as it allows people to pick foods directly from the producers allowing the consumers to gain the satisfaction of knowing they are buying their foods directly from the source of production. Although more expensive, people still flash their wallets to experience this farm-to-table freshness. But with the high costs associated with farm-to-table dining, why is it that people don’t do it on their own? I mean is it really that hard to grow your own garden?
OMA: In Germany, I put always manure in each year, put manure in and no fertilizer, nothing. I make a line, put the dirt from one and a half spade on the top und in this line, was it deeper put I manure in, from the cows. Und dann the next one, one and a half spade und put the dirt on and the manure. Und that I tried here mit [with] the spade. [Laughing] People and the neighbours coming by und see me with the spade und it was so hard Daniel. We were still young und dann later on, I find out you cannot do it. That was something. Und dann here have red cabbage und white cabbage und suddenly I check it in other days and it was lots of holes in there, what is it eaten und dann I think over two years or three first years, I make cabbage und red cabbage und dann I leave it anymore genau wie [just like] tomatoes. We have so und dann I put potatoes in und dann they eat all the potatoes. They eat the whole potatoes plant.
DANIEL NYCHUK: That was my Oma again explaining her difficulties gardening in Canada and Germany. As you can tell, there is a lot of hard work involved. Between wildlife eating your vegetables, the labour that goes into it, and the uncontrollable weather. But there are definitely perks of producing your own foods. Imagine waking up in the morning to fresh buns that you know came from your eggs.
OMA: In Germany, we live in the city, we get each morning five buns on the door. Fresh buns, that was not here.
DANIEL NYCHUK: Did you pay for that like before or did you have to go pay for it every morning or how did that work?
OMA: No, they come in the Saturday, they get eggs from me, par [a few] hundred eggs und dann I buy my stuff my apple tart oder [or] what I like. Ja, sweet stuff from him.
DANIEL NYCHUK: So then the bread was basically in exchange for the eggs.
OMA: Ja.
DANIEL NYCHUK: To pay for the eggs you would get bread in the morning from the baker?
OMA: Ja buns, in the morning; today they don’t do it anymore. I hear, it is too expensive, Daniel.
DANIEL NYCHUK: Wow, this seems like an interesting topic to go into depth on. Sounds like Oma was taking part in bartering during her time in Germany. Bartering is the exchange of goods or services between two parties that in most cases does not include a monetary transaction.30 If you think about it conceptually, before currency became a worldwide form of trade, people would rely on the trade of commodities and goods to survive. Once again, this may be a little too far back in history, so where can we situate bartering as the norm in terms of Canadian history? Canadian historian Alison Norman sums it up well in her chapter on culinary colonialism in Upper-Canada. This chapter best dates this practice of bartering to pre-colonial times in Canada from the late 1700s to mid 1800s. Norman explains that bartering between Aboriginal women, and British settling women in Upper-Canada was common practice. It merged British settlers’ ways of life with that of First Nations to allow them to create new ways of trading, cooking, and eating.31 The concept of bartering is still used today in many small businesses around the world. Orla Stapleton, a Doctor of Philosophy in the Midwest United States, explains this idea. Stapleton mentions that the current mindset of society is that bartering is only used in the modern economy when we are experiencing an economic collapse. However, Stapleton argues that bartering is also a key part of modern small businesses, especially in the food and beverage, personal care, farming, and construction industries.32 Why does this matter? Well, much like my Oma’s case the exchange of goods or services between small businesses is key. Monetary exchange makes no sense when each business is provided a product for the same cost to each other. To live a farm-to-table lifestyle these bartering transactions are necessary as they allow both sides to profit off their transactions. In my Oma’s case the producer is receiving a finished good from their raw material, while the middleman, the baker gets to benefit by marketing their baked goods as locally produced. However, economic forces including inflation, impact these types of transactions. As my Oma mentioned the exchange of eggs for buns could no longer be sustainable in Germany today as it is too expensive for the baker to give away free buns.
To recap: Farm-to-table eating is not a new concept and has been around well before our time. I mean how else were people supposed to eat before refrigeration. Bartering is still a big part of small businesses and can be used to benefit both parties by leaving money outside of the transactions. However, farm-to-table has become increasingly expensive, making it difficult for the average consumer to enjoy farm-to-table fresh eating. But the price of farm-to-table includes a lot. It includes the rising expenses of small, home producers like my Oma, and losses due to variables like wildlife and weather. It includes the rising costs of small business as well which include labour, equipment, maintenance, utilities, and transportation. But it also includes a system of community relationships, that are challenging to maintain under economic pressures. So, the next time you’re at a local farmers market to buy fresh berries, vegetables, or whatever it may be, remind yourself that sacrificing a few extra dollars includes all of those things. In the end I think that the benefit will outweigh the cost when you get to experience the perfect balance of sweetness, juiciness, and tanginess of fresh strawberries like those from my Oma’s garden.
KENT DAVIES: You have been listening to Preserves: A Manitoba Food History Podcast. Produced by myself, Kent Davies. Hosted by myself and Janis Thiessen. Written by Dorrie Hellegards, Jackson Anderson, Daniel Nychuk, and Janis Thiessen. Narrated by Daniel Nychuk and Janis Thiessen. Interviews by Daniel Nychuk and Janis Thiessen. Kimberley Moore creates the photos and images that accompany each podcast. Our theme music is by Robert Kenning. Preserves is recorded at the University of Winnipeg Oral HIstory Centre. You can check out the OHC and all the work that we do at oralhistorycentre.ca. For more Manitoba Food History Project content, information and events, go to manitobafoodhistory.ca. We’re also on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you have a Manitoba food story and you want to share it, contact us by clicking on the contact link on the website. Preserves is made possible from a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Thanks for listening.
SOURCES
1 Elizabeth Garner and Ana Paula de la O Campos, Identifying the "Family Farm": An Informal Discussion of the Concepts and Definitions,ESA Working Paper No. 14-10, (Rome: Agricultural Development Economics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, December 2014), 1-5.
2 Statistics Canada, 2016 Census of Agriculture.
3 Statistics Canada, “150 Years of Canadian Agriculture,” (27 June 2017).
4 Kenneth Michael Sylvester, The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870-1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 4-5.
5 Royden Loewen, “On the Margin or in the Lead: Canadian Prairie Historiography,” Agricultural History 73, no. 1 (1999): 45.
6 K. Murray Knuttila, “From the National Policy to Continentalism and Globalization: The Shifting Context of Canadian Agricultural Policies,” in Fighting for the Farm: Rural America Transformed, ed. Jane Adams (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 48.
7 Knuttilla, “From the National Policy to Continentalism and Globalization,” 72-4.
8 Niigaan Sinclair, “Indigenous practices fundamental to Manitoba farming,” Winnipeg Free Press (21 July 2020).
9 Chris Newman, “Indigenous Agriculture: It’s Not the How, It’s the Why,” Sylvanaqua Farms, (17 January 2020).
10 Sarah Carter, Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy, second ed., McGill-Queen's Native and Northern Series (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019), 163-8.
11 Chelsea Vowel, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada (Winnipeg: HighWater Press, 2016), 206-7.
12 Vowel, Indigenous Writes, 211.
13 Julia M.L Laforge and Stéphane M. McLachlan, “Environmentality on the Canadian Prairies: Settler-Farmer Subjectivities and Agri-Environmental Objects,” Antipode 50, no. 2 (2018): 360-1, doi:10.1111/anti.12362.
14 Charlotte van de Vorst, Making Ends Meet: Farm Women's Work in Manitoba (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2002), 27.
15 Van de Vorst, Making Ends Meet, 15-47.
16 Van de Vorst, Making Ends Meet, 47-9.
17 Cecilia Danysk, “‘A Bachelor’s Paradise’: Homesteaders, Hired Hands, and the Construction of Masculinity, 1880–1930,” in Making Western Canada: Essays on European Colonization and Settlement, ed. Catherine Cavanaugh and Jeremy Mouat (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1996), 159–60.
18 Danysk, “‘A Bachelor’s Paradise,’” 168.
19 Royden Loewen, interviewed by Janis Thiessen, 12 March 2019 in Winnipeg MB, digital audio recording, Manitoba Food History Project, Winnipeg series, Oral History Centre Archive, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg MB, 00:01:48–00:02:27, 00:13:00–00:15:13.
20 Royden Loewen interview, 00:15:32–00:16:12.
21 Royden Loewen interview, 00:16:13–00:16:48.
22 Royden Loewen interview, 00:17:08–00:17:30.
23 Royden Loewen interview, 00:17:50–00:19:38.
24 Royden Loewen interview, 00:26:37–00:27:00.
25 Anthony Winson, The Industrial Diet: The Degradation of Food and Struggle for Healthy Eating (Vancouver: UBC Press. 2013), 13-14.
26 T. Douglas Price and Ofer Bar-Yosef, “The Origins of Agriculture: New Data and New Ideas,” Current Anthropology 52 supplement 4 (October 2011): 163-174.
27 Cited in Price and Bar-Yosef, “The Origins of Agriculture,” 167.
28 Katherine Leonard Turner, How the Other Half Ate: A History of Working Class Meals at the Turn of the Century, California Studies in Food and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 28-50; Winson, The Industrial Diet.
29 Turner, How the Other Half Ate.
30 Canada Revenue Agency, “Barter Transactions,” (July 5, 1982), accessed July 17, 2022.
31 Alison Norman, “ʹFit for the Table of the Most Fastidious Epicureʹ: Culinary Colonialism in the Upper Canadian Contact Zone,” in Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History, edited by Franca Iacovetta, Valerie J. Korinek, and Marlene Epp (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 31-51.
32 Orla Stapleton, “Barter When It's Booming: A Study of Contemporary Barter and Small Business,” PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 2022, abstract.
Preserves is made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and assistance from the Oral History Centre at the University of Winnipeg.